


retreat

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Challenge Response, Established Relationship, F/M, Hot Springs & Onsen, I really just wanted to see Cassian in something very like a yukata okay, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Rogue One - some of them live, Tumblr Prompt, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 16:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10193765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Jyn's been getting worn down and chewed down to the bone by all the missions with the Pathfinders.So it's up to Cassian to get her to wind down, and he does it with a hot springs getaway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You want to see Cassian as he's dressed in this fic, right? Yes you do. [CLICKY.](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/158257180186/also-made-for-me-by-kannibal-but-it-has-its-own) Art by the magnificent [@kannibal](https://tmblr.co/mxQTesTvl-uJ1XHERy6vOkQ).

She looks at her mud-splattered boots and the cracked tiles beneath them, forcing herself forward one step at a time, and she’s just too tired to raise her head just a little bit further, to acknowledge the slightly worried looks on the faces of the beings she passes. It might have been a week since she last slept properly, and several days since she actually sat down to eat and drink something. Exhaustion gnaws on her bones with dull-pointed teeth, and -- maybe she needs to look up, maybe she needs to see familiar faces, so they can look after her.

It’s hard to remember that she can ask for people to look after her, still.

She turns the last corner, feels the weight of several weeks of slogging through humidity and stinging flying things and the constant nagging sensation of smelly water seeping in through her fatigues, and she only barely has the presence of mind to promise Kes Dameron a good and proper harangue, maybe after Shara Bey’s had a turn -- it will have to wait until she’s had a little time to rest -- what does rest even mean, Jyn wonders, vaguely, and she drags her gaze up to a familiar door. Keys in a code, haltingly, excruciatingly long pauses between each digit, and she falls into a room that smells like sea-salt and the gently smoldering fragrant char of singed branches bearing long graceful green needles.

An empty room. Her heart, already fallen into her stomach from the grinding slowness of the mission she’s just finished, sinks further. Might be somewhere in her boots now. But she makes herself cross to the cot that is just barely big enough for two. She makes herself take off some of her stinking outer garments and she’s just about falling forward into blessed, blessed sleep --

That’s when she just about notices the small package next to the pillows. She groans. Another bag. Another data pad. She has to ship out again. Where to, she has no idea.

She reaches, woodenly, for the pad, and feels her joints protest at the movement, and she presses the button that is blinking up at her.

“Jyn.”

She sighs, and half-collapses into a kneeling position.

His voice, her name, and the sudden feeling of a coat being wrapped gently around her shoulders. A negligible weight, but one of care. One of warmth.

“I know you might hate me for asking you to come out when you’ve only just come back to base from -- wherever,” Cassian’s voice continues, after a moment. “I know this might be a little too much to ask when you’re tired. But if you can trust me -- there’s a small freighter waiting for you. I’ve programmed it with the coordinates, I’ve turned on the autopilot. Just take the bag and get in, and it will take you to me.”

“Tired,” Jyn whispers, as though he were there to hear her. But she does as he asks. Leaves her jacket and her heavy muddy boots on the floor and roots around for another pair of equally sturdy shoes, cleaner, at least. The bag is not heavy. The data pad remains in her hand.

After a moment, she plays the message again, just to hear his voice. Just to hear him coaxing her on.

The freighter looks like it’s flown through several asteroid belts. She’s too tired to worry. Just lurches into the cockpit and keys in the ignition sequence. Mumbles when she’s hailed by flight control, and the magic word seems to be Cassian’s name, because when she says she’s going to where he is, the voice on the comms only wishes her a safe flight.

She’s most of the way to nodding off when she glances at the co-pilot’s chair. Bleary eyes, but she sees the thin dark curving lines anyway -- strands of hair, probably.

Cassian’s hair? He would have had to sit in that chair to work the nav console.

It’s a sign of him, here on this freighter, and she lets herself slide into sleep, trusting in the ship and trusting in him.

*

The proximity alarms jolt her into waking.

Out the viewport is a small world. Cloud bands in white and gray, swirling.

It’s a little easier to reach for the data pad. She looks for instructions and -- there. A short document full of necessary information. She gives her name to local authorities as “Kiriya Sward”.

They tell her where to land, where to catch a local transport heading to a specific place.

More importantly, they tell her to enjoy her stay.

She keeps only one holdout blaster on her person.

The sky above her is streaked with deep purple hues.

While the transport that she’s been directed to is full of other beings, is full of subdued conversations, no one seems to be overly wary or worried or fearful -- or perhaps that is just a little wishful thinking on her part.

What she does see, as a series of announcements comes on, is an actual lightening of the atmosphere: the beings around her look like they might be anticipating something -- and she finds herself hoping that there might be something nice waiting for her.

*

No one told her the trip on the transport would take several hours.

She drifts in and out of sleep -- until the whole thing comes to a stop and she jerks herself upright, rubs some of the drowsiness from her eyes, sees that everyone else in the cabin with her has almost finished disembarking. She forces herself to her feet, almost runs to follow them --

“Jyn,” says that warm voice.

She blinks, stares at Cassian, blinks again.

He laughs, quietly, but not at her. It’s an inviting laugh, made more so by what he says, gentle and just for her alone. “I have another one just like it, but for you.”

Her fingers shake, just a little, when she plucks at his sleeve. The blue-and-white striped material just brushes the inside of his wrist, and seems to be all of a piece with the rest of what he’s wearing -- something like a robe with very little structuring, and all held in with a sober gray belt that’s the width of Jyn’s own palm. His feet are bare, clad only in what look like wooden sandals.

She touches the skin of his throat, bared by the vee of his robe, and shivers, because his skin is so warm.

So is his smile, when she drags her gaze upwards.

Cassian says, “Come on. Private villa.”

“You,” Jyn starts. Can’t quite find the next words.

“Me,” and does Cassian actually sound light-hearted? His smile is fleeting, but full of gentle laughter. “I knew you’d be tired after that mission. And also I know that you have not been taking any down time.”

“Look who’s talking,” Jyn mumbles.

“Why else do you think we’re here?”

There is no one else in the house that he leads her to, a graceful building, at the entrance of which she has to take off her shoes.

She follows the soft pad of Cassian’s bare feet into a series of connected small spaces, and catches, just, the details: a sunken hearth in the center of one, a low table flanked by embroidered cushions in another, three large vessels in another.

But the space he stops in is spread with several soft quilts, and the entire farther wall seems to be made of sliding panels, which look out onto -- steam, and rounded rocks, and she blinks. Turns in his direction. “I’ve never been to a world with hot springs before.”

He nods, once. “I hear these are supposed to be -- healing.”

“That sounds nice.”

She follows his instructions: clothes off and rolled into a bundle for later cleaning. A quick but thorough wash in a tiled enclosure off to the side of the spring -- but as soon as the water touches her skin she lets out a long shuddering sigh. Scent of minerals and fragrant coal, and nearly scalding, just the right temperature to linger in.

She watches through slitted eyes as Cassian carefully takes off his clothes. As he picks up a small towel from a basket near the quilts, folds it into a square and puts it on his head, before stepping into the spring -- and the steam wreathes his body from her view, but she can see the lines in his face go slack and nearly disappear, as he leans back against the rocks.

So she doesn’t bother to get dressed after she rinses off all the soap -- she follows his example with the small towel, and dips a toe into the spring.

It’s almost unbearably hot.

And she has to force herself not to rush in, to dive in. She has to force herself to, essentially, wade in -- to let the hot hot hot water cover her, one part at a time. Feet, knees, hips -- the rocky outcroppings beneath the surface are just enough for her to sort of perch upon -- she sinks into the water at last, its warmth lapping at her chest, and she blows out a long soft sigh.

Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees Cassian smile.

That’s before she closes her eyes and lets the water leach out her pain and her tension and the many many many hours of the mission she’s just finished, and the missions before that one.

She finds Cassian’s hand, warm from the overwhelming heat of the water that surrounds them, and holds on to it.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Mmm.”

If she blinks herself awake from a nap in the spring, she stops feeling guilty the moment she hears Cassian snore, just once, very quietly.

So she presses herself to his side, feels his arm come around her -- she kisses the side of his throat, kisses his stubbled cheek, and soaks in the warmth of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Five: "warmth" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](http://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr.
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
